Government legislation: The HMRC’s Partnership Consultation Document

Government legislation is dealing with tax leakage between corporate partners according to Pamela Sayers, who explains further in this TV show. Government legislation: Limited liability partnerships It’s particularly important for professional partnerships and limited liability partnerships because probably for the first time really since the introduction of LLPs [...]

Government legislation: The HMRC’s Partnership Consultation Document

Government legislation is dealing with tax leakage between corporate partners according to Pamela Sayers, who explains further in this TV show. Government legislation: Limited liability partnerships It’s particularly important for professional partnerships and limited liability partnerships because probably for the first time really since the introduction of LLPs [...]

Good governance means having great people at the top looking out for the company. But how much should a company pay for a good director? In this TV show Caroline Newsholme discusses pay vs performance.

Good governance comes at a price

You should certainly pay for talent. And good directors come at a price. But there’s a feeling that directors remuneration is slightly out of kilter with the real world. It’s certainly being increasing, notwithstanding the fact that we are in a recession, there’s been a quite substantial upwards trend

And obviously a lot of companies have struggled and may not have performed as well. So there there’s an inconsistency between actually the wellbeing of the company and what the directors are being paid.

But I think certainly directors are alive to the concerns that have been voiced by investors and the business world generally. I don’t think they are blasé about the position, they recognise that there has to be a proper link between pay and performance and we can’t continue to see excess packages which are not really justified. Whether we’ll get change at the rate we need change is another question.

But there’s a lot of impetus in the corporate world to increase transparency and to change what’s gone before.

Corporate governance issues arising from boardroom structure includes how much each member should be paid for what they are expected to do, as Rob Wirszycz discusses in this TV show.

Corporate governance issues - Defining roles

Remuneration is a really sticky area in a sense. Actually, if I’m a Non-Executive Director I don’t expect to own any shares. My belief is that a Non-Executive Director is there to be completely objective. And I’ve been in many Board meetings where effectively the Board meeting is a meeting of the shareholders. Self-interest always wins in those meetings. So if I’m a Non-Executive Director in a meeting and I’m there, my job, I’ll accept a retain, a relatively small retainer, depending on what they want me to do. If they do anything away, outside of the brief, my belief is that that should be paid for separately. But so just to be a Non-Executive Director, I would like to be paid for the very clear, clearly-defined, but I don’t want, expect any shares. As a Chairman it’s different. Now the Chairman, I’m acting on behalf of the shareholders, so I actually have to have alignment with them, so what I always ask for when I’m Chairman is again a retainer, which is a small amount of money, relatively small amount of money, but I want to be able to earn shares based on the achievement of the plan. So if we achieve the plan, which I’m owning, then I believe that I should be aligned with the shareholders’ interests and I should be able to earn in shares into the business.

Corporate governance issues include the relationship between management and staff. In this TV show Rob Wirszycz discusses managing expectations between directors & employees.

Corporate governance issues - Directors vs employees

I think there’s something to be said for the European Works Council idea, even the Mittelstand in Germany has a Works Council, you know, which is almost like this sort of body that sits below, or even above some, in some cases a Board of Directors. I think there’s a real case for that. The UK’s doing okay. It’s quite public, you know, the data you have to disclose on Companies House and all that kind of stuff and, as I say, with public social media and other stuff, there’s much more disclosure now than there ever was. So I it’s not a bad place to do business but I think I think there’s still a an us and them between Directors and, if you like, staff, and I think, you know, we should, Directors should explain their role in the business a lot better. I try and for example, tomorrow one of my businesses has got to kick off and what I’m going to be doing is explaining what I do as Chairman. You know, it will be about two minutes, but I’m just going to explain what I do and how they can use me, or abuse me, I suppose, but I mean it’s quite important that I make sure that it’s very clear, the role that I’ve got and my expectations of everybody else as well.

Informed financial planning: Structuring tax efficient investments

Informed financial planning is essential when it comes to investments. Investment managers should be well informed of tax rules so that no errors are made. Michael Pagliari explains further in this business TV show.

Informed financial planning and investments

There are different categories of planning, so for resident domicile UK clients the principles are pretty well-established, there are certain types of securities that should and can sit perfectly well in portfolios and there are other types of securities that shouldn’t. So, to give an example, there are some tax efficiencies through using fixed income securities which trade at which trade at discounts, there’s advantages in using OECs but there are some other instruments which effectively take a capital gains tax charge and transform it into an income tax charge at, you know, a much higher rate. And then if you move on to the sort of res non-dom world, that’s a very sort of … a much more complicated area with much more potential for error. So for example it’s very important that income and capital are separated, managed in separate buckets; if those are mixed there can be very severe tax consequences. So it’s really basic housekeeping-type issues but extremely important that the investment manager has a good handle on them. Investment does involve risk. The value of investments can go down as well as up. This video contains information believed to be reliable but no guarantee is given. See Video for full disclaimer.

Ensuring boards make good strategy development decisions

Business strategy development is the job of the board. In this TV show Rob Wirszycz discusses how they can get these decisions right.

Deciding on strategy development

Boards, I believe, are where decisions are made. And, you know, while you want the Chief Executive and their team to make other decisions, you know, ask forgiveness rather than permission sometimes, but the decisions are in my view, what I call an irrevocable allocation of resources. So, if we make a decision at a Board, we don’t go back and relitigate, unless the facts materially change. I mean I think there’s a quote from John Maynard-Kings, who sort of said, you know, “when the facts change I change my opinion” and that’s the truth, you know, you shouldn’t hold on to something when the facts are materially different. But the Board makes those irrevocable decisions, they write them down, everybody has to agree, so you can’t come out of a Board meeting saying “Well, I know they said that then but I’m doing this”. Decisions are really important in Boards, and that’s the role of the Non-Executives, be they Directors or Chairmen, is to ensure that the decision is taken in a proper context and it’s not because “We would think that way because we’re all in our 40s and 50s and male”.

Attitude to risk relates to life cycles

Attitude to risk may depend on the age of the client or the business. Younger people lean more towards risk, as Michael Pagliari explains in this TV show.

The young person's attitude to risk

I think that goes back to sort of life cycle questions. As clients are younger and are looking to build assets they may well have a higher disposition towards risk and that might lead them towards more growth-type portfolios. As clients advance through that life cycle and perhaps sell a business or begin to retire then it’s really a question about draw-downs and inheritance tax planning and so on, and portfolios tend to de-risk to some extent. So as you grow through that life cycle portfolios do tend to sort of de-risk over time.

Business Disruption: Understanding the cost of absence

Business disruption from absence is bigger than may leaders realise. In this TV show Matthew Haswell answers the question - Do business owners understand the cost of absence?

Awareness of business disruption

I don’t think they do, I mean that’s a broad brush answer, I don’t think they do because sickness absence costs, although in a couple of years, in the last year they have actually gone down slightly but as an overall cost it’s still pretty huge for UK industry particularly, well the private sector most research is done on. Now health and wellbeing and employee engagement and connection and holistic approaches to health and wellbeing is a subject that a lot of people, particularly HR consider, whether HR directors consider it from a cost perspective only or they actually think about holistic products is another question. I think what we’d like to do is encourage finance and HR to look at the question of sickness absence together and come up with a strategy to actually minimise the impact. It’s very difficult to get a finance director to sign off on a request from HR when the finance director can’t actually see why putting these procedures in place or even purchasing insurance or the health related products can actually help matters.

Inside Finance will continue bring you expert insight in to business disruption and related topics.

Business benefits of investing in the UK

There are many business benefits of the UK environment as Stephen Drew of Smith & Williamson discusses in this TV show.

UK's business benefits

I think there are a variety of reasons as to why people would choose the UK as a good place to invest. Certainly we have some interesting sectors that appeal to a large number of investors from outside of the UK, and in particular we’re seeing a lot of activity in life sciences, the creative industries around professional practices and professional services and in the technology space. So they’re sectors that are seen as high growth and there are foreign investors that want a piece of that action and therefore they have a certain amount of appeal to see how they can get involved with those sectors. When combined with a business environment that’s reasonably friendly and it’s quite easy to get involved with those businesses, to make the investment programmes, and to start fresh businesses and that makes it an easier investment decision compared to other territories. The UK government has been very helpful in trying to make the taxation environment business-friendly and therefore there are attractions again for encouraging foreign investors to actually put cash into the UK economy, which will help the general improvement in what we’re looking for within the UK as well.

If you are interested in discussion around UK business benefits and investment in different environment, please browse more TV shows on Inside Finance.

Legal sector had a change in the types of case brought to them when the economic downturn disrupted businesses across the globe. In this TV show Doug Hall discusses the increase in breach of contract cases.

Legal Sector: The impact of the recession on commercial disputes

Very simply, it may be a cliché but the recession meant that pretty much overnight in some sectors the world changed and the example of the ship building is a prime example of that, in 2007 manufacturers in the far east can’t make enough ships, in 2008 suddenly people operating ships don’t want to buy them anymore, so suddenly the world changes overnight. That creates an impetus for all kinds of breaches to take place, because the world has changed simply. So what we saw after the recession or after the recession started was a big increase in the number of breaches of contract cases, we’ve seen a higher incidence of shareholder disputes and that’s simply there may be longstanding issues between shareholders but when there’s strife, when you’re operating in a difficult environment, maybe those tensions are amplified and they fall out, the same with partnerships, including professional partnerships. We’ve seen actions against professionals which for example arise out of insolvency, so a company goes down because times are tough, and in the lead up to the company going down there’s been issues with what advisors, professionals, auditors have done, there may have been issues with what the directors had done, they were doing their best to save the company but maybe they end up committing a breach of fiduciary duty or selling assets at under value, or getting confused about what’s their money and what’s the companies.
Keep browsing the fantastic TV shows on Inside Finance to hear more about how the legal sector deal with business disputes. Look out for more form Doug Hall.

Informed financial planning advisors under the spotlight

Informed financial planning advisors pass on their wisdom to clients. If a company fails they will naturally look at back at this advice. In this TV show Doug Hall discuses throwing the spotlight on professional advice.

Informed financial planning advisors

For example auditors, we are dealing with a number of cases, where a company has failed, and if the company had not failed there wouldn’t be an issue. But in the company going into administration for example, major creditors had lost and they may say that they have relied for example on audited accounts to make decisions, to lend money or to support the company and in the cold light of day the company having failed, that’s an example where you may go back and look at what the auditor said in earlier years. So we have situations arising from insolvent companies where the spotlight is thrown onto a whole range of professional advice that they were given before the company failed. Which never would have come under that spotlight if the company hadn’t gone into administration for example. It's not an area that we get involved in but valuers have seen a big increase in the number of actions against them very simple because the banks relied on valuations of properties for example, and then when the company has gone into administration and the bank has lost out, they then go back and look again at the professional opinions that they relied upon, in making their original lending decisions.

Inside Finance will continue to produce great videos on informed financial planning advisors and similar subjects.